A trader, Ndukwe Ekwekwe has narrated to the Judicial Panel
of Inquiry into SARS-related abuses how SARS officers arrested him in his shop,
tortured him and threw him off a two-storey building in Lagos.
According to Ekwekwe, four SARS officers, led by Haruna
Hamisu stormed his shop on February 16, 2018.
“I asked them what my crime was, but none of them told me.
Other traders in the shopping complex equally asked the same question of the
police officers. At a point, the police officers began to shoot to scare people
away,” he said.
Ekwekwe said the police officers eventually took him away to
‘Area F’ police station, where the SARS office was.
At the station, the petitioner said he was beaten, stabbed
in his hand and on his back, tortured, and dumped in a cell where the inmates
subjected him to another round of beating.
The police officers reportedly took Ekwekwe to his shop the
next day, February 17.
He also alleged that the officers broke into his shop and
auctioned off his goods.
Ekwekwe said he protested to the officers, following which
one of them pushed him off a two-storey building.
The petitioner said his spinal cord got broken and he was
taken to the Lagos University Teaching Hospital.
He said he became crippled and damaged his bladder.
The petitioner told the panel that he now wears a diaper.
Ekwekwe’s mother, Mrs. Ibekwe, led him into the hearing room
on a wheelchair.
The Panel Chairperson Justice Doris Okwuobi (retd) admitted
hospital documents, X-rays, telephone numbers of the indicted officers and
other documents tendered by the petitioners as exhibits.
Okwuobi thereafter adjourned further hearing into the
petition till November 13.
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